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Critics Right and Left Protest Book Removals

The federal Bureau of Prisons is under pressure from members of Congress and religious groups to reverse its decision to purge the shelves of prison chapel libraries of all religious books and materials that are not on the bureau’s lists of approved resources.

Outrage over the bureau’s decision has come from both conservatives and liberals, who say it is inappropriate to limit inmates to a religious reading list determined by the government.

The Republican Study Committee, a caucus of some of the most conservative Republicans in the House of Representatives, sent a letter on Wednesday to the bureau’s director, Harley G. Lappin, saying, “We must ensure that in America the federal government is not the undue arbiter of what may or may not be read by our citizens.”

Representative Jeb Hensarling of Texas, chairman of the Republican Study Committee, said in an interview, “Anything that impinges upon the religious liberties of American citizens, be they incarcerated or not, is something that’s going to cause House conservatives great concern.”

The bureau, the target of a class-action lawsuit by prisoners because of the book purge, is hearing criticism from a broad array of religious groups and leaders. Sojourners, a liberal evangelical group based in Washington, sent an alert to its members, who within 48 hours sent the bureau more than 15,000 e-mail messages urging it to scrap the policy. The issue is also a hot topic on conservative Christian talk radio shows.

Spokesmen for the Bureau of Prisons said it was not reconsidering its policy. The bureau said it was prompted to act by a report in 2004 from the inspector general of the Department of Justice, which mentioned that since most prisons did not catalog their library materials, radical books that incite violence and hatred could infiltrate the shelves.

Initially, the bureau set out to take an inventory of every book and item in its chapel libraries. When the list grew to the tens of thousands, the bureau decided instead to generate lists of acceptable books and materials — about 150 items for each of 20 religions or religious categories. It calls that plan the Standardized Chapel Library Project.

Prison chaplains were instructed in the spring to remove everything not on the lists, and put it in storage. The bureau said it planned to issue additions to the lists once a year.

Douglas Kelly, a Muslim inmate at the minimum security Federal Prison Camp in Otisville, N.Y., said his chaplain showed up in the chapel library with garbage bags one day last spring and removed “hundreds and hundreds” of volumes. The only thing left on the sole shelf devoted to Islam was a Koran and a few volumes of sayings of the Prophet Muhammad.

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“It’s very important to have as much material as possible,” said Mr. Kelly, a recent convert who said he learned about Islam from a book another prisoner gave him. “What I know of Islam, and what I’ve been able to practice so far, has been as a result of the literature and the books I’ve been able to get ahold of. Unfortunately this purge has curtailed our short supply.

“I’ve seen the list of approved books, and 99 percent of them, we never had to begin with,” said Mr. Kelly, 40, who pleaded guilty to using a false identity. He said that prisoners were permitted to keep only five books of their own.

Mr. Kelly is an original plaintiff in the lawsuit against the bureau, and expects to sign on as a plaintiff in the class-action lawsuit, which was refiled in late August. The other named plaintiffs are a Christian and a Jew.

Mr. Kelly and the Christian plaintiff, John Okon, agreed to a telephone interview, but Mr. Okon decided not to participate when officials at the Otisville prison insisted on sitting in the room during the interview. (The Jewish plaintiff has already been released to a halfway house and declined an interview).

Some organizations that advocate for inmates’ religious rights say they have privately been trying to persuade federal authorities to rethink the policy.

Leaders of the Aleph Institute, a Jewish group, and Prison Fellowship, a Christian group, say they met last week with the director of the Bureau of Prisons and Acting Deputy Attorney General Craig S. Morford.

Rabbi Aaron Lipskar, executive director of the Aleph Institute, a group founded by the ultra-Orthodox Lubavitcher movement, said that the government officials tried to reassure them that a book could be restored to the library if a prisoner requested it, the chaplain vetted it from start to finish, the chaplain sent a certification form to the bureau in Washington and the book made the updated approval list.

“I find it almost impossible that they can expect a prison chaplaincy department, which is already so strained, to take the time to review all these materials,” Rabbi Lipskar said. “No matter to what extent they try to fix this policy, it will never come out right.”

A version of this article appears in print on , on Page A13 of the New York edition with the headline: Critics Right and Left Protest Book Removals. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe